


old fools, dancing

by zeldalookslonely



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Love, M/M, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 05:47:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21094379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldalookslonely/pseuds/zeldalookslonely
Summary: Aziraphale is starting to wonder if he’s not quite as emotionally intelligent as he once thought.





	old fools, dancing

Aziraphale is starting to wonder if he’s not quite as emotionally intelligent as he once thought. After all, it’s only in hindsight that he can piece it together: Crowley giving a twist of the lip here, a vacant expression there. Eyes closed several moments too long. Forced smiles, forced laughter. All accompanied by a wave of love and pain so strong it had almost knocked Aziraphale over; actually _had _knocked him over once, early in their acquaintance. Not that he’d admitted it. How could he admit what he didn’t understand?

Of course, he wouldn’t have it admitted it anyway. In fact, had he understood, he’d have been even less likely to admit anything out loud.

_That was very honest_, he compliments himself. 

Honesty. Honesty is a state of being so difficult to attain and maintain that Aziraphale is also starting to wonder if he’s not quite as honest as he once thought. The bookshop has been shut for weeks since he can’t possibly see a way of running it without employing, at least, mild to moderate deception.

“A conundrum for sure,” Aziraphale says aloud.

“Hmm?” Crowley murmurs, half-asleep on the sofa.

“Oh! I forgot you were here,” Aziraphale says, _honestly _but perhaps also rudely.

Fortunately Crowley seems amused; he tilts a half-smile at Aziraphale and lets his eyes drift closed again.

“It’s only that I’m so comfortable around you,” Aziraphale adds.

Crowley says nothing, eyes shut tight, but a charming spot of red appears on his cheeks and migrates to his ears. Aziraphale has to close his eyes for several moments too long against the dreadful mix of love and pain welling in his own heart. Dreadful.

…

“Are you alright?” Crowley asks one day, brows furrowed. “You seem a little… sad. Lately.”

At that moment, Aziraphale decides he will discuss everything with Crowley: the love, the honesty, the pain. All of it. Of course, he means to take a few weeks, or months: think out what he wants to say, prepare enough that he knows he won’t make things worse. Instead, he says, so quickly it may as well have been one long word, “There’s something we should talk about but I would really rather not.”

Crowley makes a show of examining the fingernails on one hand, then the other. “Is it upstairs? Down?”

“No. Nothing since--”

“The Apocalypse that wasn’t, right.” Crowley drums his fingers on the armrest of the sofa, then his knee. He blinks and shakes his head, clenches his fingers tightly into a fist. “Well angel, lay it on me. What should we talk about?”

He’s _nervous_, Aziraphale realizes. He’s _nervous _and he’s willing to listen anyway. It seems an insurmountable act of bravery to Aziraphale, one that knocks him off-kilter and leaves him floundering in the ether.

“Can we talk about it later?” Aziraphale asks dimly, and Crowley nods, makes his excuses, leaves, is gone, gone. Gone so quickly Aziraphale wasn’t even able to secure a promise to return, as he has tried to do since all the unpleasantness with their former employers. He’s keenly aware that, without The Arrangement holding them together, Crowley might realize he doesn’t really have any real reason to see Aziraphale. And now Aziraphale has run him off.

_I didn’t even tell a lie_, Aziraphale thinks, which his how he realizes it’s possible to be very honest and also very cowardly.

…

Crowley does come back, of course. He always comes back. No matter what havoc Aziraphale has wreaked, no matter what trouble he’s in, Crowley comes back and even has the decency not to mention any previous dust-ups. 

But Aziraphale is going to mention it. He’s been thinking about it for days and has an outline in his head; a discussion will be had, come what may.

“Crowley!” he says, far too loudly, grimaces, moderates his tone. “Crowley. My dear.” He stretches one hand toward Crowley’s hand, just as he’d practiced, but since he practiced with _Middlemarch _the whole experience is very different. He thought maybe he’d take Crowley’s hand and Crowley would take his hand back, but Crowley’s hand is very limp and obviously not receptive, so Aziraphale just kind of pats his knuckles. It doesn’t seem like enough, so he pats one more time. Crowley looks confused and not especially pleased.

“Is something wrong?” he asks.

“Love is a very strange thing,” Aziraphale says, forging ahead with his speech. “You see, love has many facets. One might be able to sense love, and still not be able to tell the whys and wherefores of… that particular love. For example--”

“Angel,” Crowley interrupts. “Is there a point to this?”

“Love is like a gemstone,” Aziraphale blurts out; a line he thought of days ago and immediately discarded as nonsensical.

Crowley slumps in his seat. “Is this--? Are you worried about--?”

Aziraphale would love to know how Crowley intends to finish that sentence. He would also love to extricate himself from this _love is a gemstone_ mess he’s made, but at that moment someone raps on the door to the bookshop, loudly.

“We’re closed!” Aziraphale and Crowley shout together, but the knocking just gets louder and more persistent. 

Aziraphale sighs and gives Crowley an apologetic look. He sweeps to the front of the shop in annoyance and swings the door open to reveal a frantic looking man holding an angry looking infant.

“I need you to watch my son,” says the man, a stranger.

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale says, “what?”

“My wife and daughter,” says the man, “hospital.” He flails; tears leak from his eyes. Aziraphale catches one arm and sends tranquil thoughts.

Crowley comes up behind Aziraphale and swoops in to scoop up the baby. “It’s all right,” he says. “There’s a taxi waiting, just outside. Go see your family.”

The man hesitates, looking Crowley up and down.

“Your child could be in no better hands,” Aziraphale says gently, and with a sob, the man leaves.

…

“Was that a neighbor?” Crowley asks later, stretched out on the sofa, nameless infant napping on his chest.

“Haven’t the slightest.”

“Then why would he come here?”

Aziraphale shrugs. Things like this have happened before. “Some humans… not all, of course, but some, seem to have an instinctive trust in me.”

“Ah,” says Crowley. “Yeah.” He’s occasionally been at the mercy of human instincts coming from the opposite end of the spectrum, they both know.

“It’s not deserved,” says Aziraphale. “Not for either of us.” He pauses. “You were a better nanny than I could have ever been. And you’d have been a better gardener, too. Far better.”

“Warlock’s toenail clippings would have been a better gardener,” says Crowley idly. The baby has a death grip on his thumb, even in his sleep.

“Did you ever-- I never believed we’d be safe. Not like this. I never truly believed we’d be alone.”

Crowley shrugs, minutely, so as not to jostle the baby.

“I thought about it, though. What would happen, what we would do without our employer’s influences. Without that danger always looming. I say _thought_, but I suppose it was more like a daydream. A persistent daydream in which I would sit here, in my shop; I would want to go to you, but instead I would wait here for you to come to me. You would come to me, here, and I would use that to bolster myself: to allow myself to be brave. So you would come to me, smiling, dashing as ever, _lovely_, and I would say, _oh, my darling, I want you for my own, do you want me, I’m yours, I’m yours_.”

“Aziraphale, angel,” Crowley says, wide-eyed, red-faced, beautiful, _breathless_, but for what?

“You were never unkind, you couldn’t be, but it was clear: I was too late, it’s been too long, you’ve hardened your heart to mine, _send in the clowns, there ought to be clowns_.” Aziraphale coughs. Or sobs. “Well within your rights, of course! I understood completely. But at the same time, it was like… crumbling to ash. Falling to dust. Rather dramatic, I suppose.”

Crowley stands, quick and graceful, cradling the baby to his chest. For a moment, Aziraphale is certain he’s going to stalk outside, infant and all, but instead he carefully places the baby in Aziraphale’s arms, shifting Aziraphale’s elbow for neck support, and collapses to his knees, face in Aziraphale’s lap.

“Darling,” Aziraphale says, timid. A question.

Crowley peeks up. His eyes are full of tears but there’s a small smile on his face, and he pushes upward to press his face into Aziraphale’s neck. “No need for clowns,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Magnetic Fields


End file.
